Obscure Recordings: Say, Darling
In 1958, Say, Darling was itself transformed into a Broadway show, but an unusual one that described itself as "a comedy about a musical." Bissell collaborated with his wife, Marian, and Abe Burrows Guys and Dolls, Can-Can on the script, which Burrows staged. Because Say, Darling was about the production of a musical, all of the songs would be performance pieces from the musical in progress, and all were accompanied on stage by just two pianos, played by Colin Romoff and Peter Howard. Writing the songs were composer Jule Styne who co-produced the show and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who had previously collaborated on Two on the Aisle, Peter Pan, and Bells Are Ringing.
In Say, Darling, David Wayne Finian's Rainbow, Teahouse of the August Moon played Jack Jordan, who leaves his home in Iowa to come to New York and work on a stage adaptation of his novel, Paddle Wheel, about a turn-of-the-century riverboat captain and suggested by stories that Jack's Uncle Orville had related. Jack is surprised to learn that New York producers Hackett and Snow want to make Paddle Wheel into a musical called The Girl from Indiana, shifting the action away from Wisconsin and changing the heroine from an American Indian to an Italian. Say, Darling goes on to chart the progress of the musical through its New Haven tryout, with The Girl from Indiana gradually becoming less and less the show that Jack had originally envisioned. Meanwhile, Jack neglects the wife and kids he has brought east with him and falls for the show's leading lady.
Young Robert Morse made a hit playing Snow, The Girl from Indiana's slightly pretentious co-producer, and a character everyone assumed was modeled on Hal Prince, who began his producing career with The Pajama Game. Hackett, Snow's co-producer who is also directing The Girl from Indiana, was not so much Prince's real-life producing partner, Robert E. Griffith, as Pajama Game's co-author/co-director, that grand older man of the theater, George Abbott.
And was Pajama Game leading lady Janis Paige echoed in Say, Darling by the character of Irene Lovelle, a red-headed Hollywood actress who wants the title role in The Girl from Indiana? In her first scene, Irene declares, "I'll shoot anybody that gets in my way," and she may be only half kidding. Cast as Irene was Vivian Blaine, making her second appearance in a Broadway musical. The first was as Miss Adelaide in Burrows' Guys and Dolls. Vocalist Johnny Desmond made his Broadway debut as Rudy Lorraine, the pop composer and Irene's ex-husband making his theatrical debut with the songs for The Girl from Indiana, a character perhaps similar to Pajama Game songwriter Richard Adler. Also in the cast of Say, Darling were Elliott Gould and Virginia Martin, the latter eventually replaced by Paula Wayne.
Say, Darling opened at the ANTA now the Virginia Theatre in April, 1958, won favorable reviews, and played 332 performances. The New York Times' Brooks Atkinson didn't care for the show, but almost everyone else liked it. Walter Kerr Herald Tribune called it "a smart, sassy and wonderfully funny romp." The New Yorker's Wolcott Gibbs found it to be "an exceptionally cheerful entertainment." In The Post, Richard Watts called it "delightful entertainment...gay, charming, humorous, and warm-hearted."
During the run, Eddie Albert replaced Wayne. Albert would follow his stint in Say, Darling by replacing Robert Preston in The Music Man. In 1959, Say, Darling was brought back for a short run at City Center, with Morse joined by Mindy Carson and Orson Bean.
Read today, the script of Say, Darling has its dated aspects. Not wanting his ex-wife in the show, composer Rudy attempts to denigrate her ability to perform on stage by saying, "Maybe you've been singing into microphones too long. Maybe they can't hear you in the theater." At an audition sequence, every young female applicant sings "I Could Have Danced All Night." When tap dancers are ruled out for the ensemble of Indiana, one tapper exclaims, "That damn Agnes de Mille."
But in other ways, Say, Darling demonstrates that theatrical matters may not have changed all that much over the years. When the show is in trouble in New Haven, a businessman who's one of the backers declares, "To me a show is like any other product. It's got to be merchandised." In another scene, the production's press agent speaks to The Times' theatre columnist the script uses the columnist's real name, Sam Zolotow, adamantly denying rumors that the show is in trouble and postponing, just before the show is, in fact, postponed.
Featuring a sizable cast, Say, Darling is in three acts, and there are ten songs. At the producer's office, Irene sings "Try to Love Me," one of Rudy's old pop songs. Songwriter Rudy demonstrates "It's Doom" at the office and "It's the Second Time You Meet That Matters" at the auditions. Both numbers are rejected by Hackett. Against Jack's wishes, Hackett asks for a "Husking Bee" opening number, and Rudy improvises one. Inspired by standing on a Broadway stage, Jack is moved to sing an old hymn he used to do in the church choir, "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning."
Irene swallows her pride and auditions for the lead with "Chief of Love," Rudy's current pop hit. During rehearsals, Rudy introduces a big ballad, "Say, Darling," and Irene tries out "The Carnival Song." When things get tough in New Haven and everyone is blaming everyone else, Rudy decides to put "Try to Love Me" into the show, along with a new waltz, "Dance Only With Me." And when Jack finally realizes what The Girl from Indiana must be about, he helps fix the second act with a new song, "Something's Always Happening on the River."
The Say, Darling songs are attractive but distinctly minor Styne-Comden-Green. A couple of them are meant to be pop songs, and several others are meant to be less-than-sterling show tunes. But then the songs were secondary in this comedy about the theatre, even if the score took advantage of the fact that Blaine and Desmond were top-notch singers.
Because the songwriters were distinguished, the leads were respected performers, and the show had a decent run, a cast album of Say, Darling got made, and by one of the top show labels, RCA Victor. They gave it the full "Living Stereo" treatment, and splashed on the cover a gaudy shot of the three stars standing on stage.
The songs were recorded more or less in show order, with some numbers "The Husking Bee" receiving a fuller treatment than in the theatre. But the chief difference between the songs in the theatre and on the LP is the fact that, for the recording, Broadway's Sid Ramin West Side Story created orchestrations and conducted an orchestra hired just for the album sessions. Although orchestrator Robert Ginzler gets no album credit, his biography in the Playbill for Encores!' Bye Bye Birdie stated that he worked on the Say, Darling cast recording. In addition, a full overture and a title-song finale were created for the LP.
Using an orchestra was entirely understandable, as few would have wanted a cast album with the singers accompanied only by piano. Yet because of the odd nature of both the score and the recording, the Say, Darling recording is a genuine oddity, sounding less like a show album and more like a collection of pleasant popular songs and assorted oddities, with one particularly bizarre track in that "Lower Lights" number.
Other singers briefly heard on the recording are Mitchell Gregg who would later sing "The Man Who Has Everything" in No Strings; Jerome Cowan, who played Hackett; and Steve Condos, who, strangely enough, would go on to replace Johnny Desmond during the tryout of Sugar.
Best here are the ballads "Try to Love Me," "Dance Only With Me," and the title song. Blaine sells the deliberately cheesy "Chief of Love," and the next-to-closing "River" song is catchy. Because of the superb vocals of Blaine and Desmond, Say, Darling makes for moderately pleasant listening. But one mostly enjoys playing Say, Darling because it's one of the strangest Broadway cast recordings ever made.
Along with another Styne-RCA Victor title, Hazel Flagg, the Say, Darling cast album has never made it to CD. Perhaps some day it will appear, and with the spoken passages that were said to have been recorded for the album but left off the release.
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